The Trove

Great reads and other finds for the literary-minded
Compiled by Pat D’Amico

The audience of the NYT's Paper Cuts blog responds with some great quotes, ranging from Aeschylus to Dylan, when asked, “What song or poem, readers, has touched you when you were bereft?”

“A constantly updated and expanding list chosen by writers and readers, Faber Finds aims to restore to print a wealth of lost classics. Books of fiction, poetry, memoir, history, criticism, essays and anthologies — quality writing by authors of distinction, printed only on demand.” Check out the first selections for print, enter a contest to win 5 of the books, and then submit your own suggestions.

BookLamp, now in beta, is being touted as the next big application. (Rumor has it that Amazon wants it.) It’s a program that matches “readers to books through an analysis of writing styles, similar to the way that Pandora.com matches music lovers to new music. Do you like Stephen King’s It, but [think] it was too long? The technology behind BookLamp allows you to find books that are written with a similar tone, tense, perspective, action level, description level, and dialog level, while at the same time allowing you to specify details like ... half the length. It’s impervious to outside influences — like advertising — that impact socially driven recommendation systems, and isn’t reliant on a large user base to work.” Recent articles about this application — and an informative FAQ — indicate its potential. Watch a video demo on the front page. Register for the beta, join the forum and get a chance to direct the best usage for BookLamp. The creator has a blog where he’s been posting about its development since the first day. There’s lots of positive buzz about this one: “The potential of this project is amazing. The technology behind it could help people recognize budding writers in the same way the internet helped people recognize independent bands.”

Another time suck is Deviant Art, which provides free hosting for artists and their art. However, click on the categories in the drop-down menu and you’ll see the site isn’t all about visual art. There’s a large community of users, a busy forum, and a frequently updated news blog.

Esquire used to showcase flash fiction as a regular feature. Their latest exercise, the Napkin Project, is a new variation on the super-short story:

“Someone, in a bar somewhere, scribbling on a napkin in the failing afternoon light; the kind of story or list or note that might be crammed in a pocket and pulled out years later to tell something deep and forgotten — perhaps life’s most intimate first chapter, nearly lost forever. So we gave this spontaneous medium a shot. We put 250 napkins in the mail to writers from all over the country — some with a half dozen books to their name, others just finishing their first. In return, we got nearly a hundred stories. We present most of them here — from lush to spare, hilarious to terrifying.”

storySouth’s mission statement reads, “Just like kudzu, the 21st-century south is a mix of traditional and new, regional and international. And even though kudzu is unfairly dismissed as a weed, it has a vitality and ability which far surpasses that of most plants native to America. storySouth’s most important mission is to showcase the best fiction, creative nonfiction, and poetry that writers from the new south have to offer. Special emphasis is given to finding and promoting the works of promising new writers.” Check out the stories about an alligator rodeo (“Grappling”) and a near-mystical encounter with a water spout (“A View from Eagle Rock Mountain”), or go to the Featured Stories index.

—Pat D’Amico is a regular Readerville contributor. She is currently reading The Resurrectionist by Jack O’Connell.

Comments

[Kat Warren]

PatD, hon, you are going to be the death of me with these fascinating links. In actual fact, however, I'll probably get fired first.

I'm a NYT PaperCut blog fan although I confess a) I rarely read the comments and b) I'm probably the only living (as of now) human who doesn't adore Bob Dylan.

So, thanks, I think.

[lisapeet]

That request for comforting quotes obviously hit a nerve. There's some wonderful stuff there, a lot of it new to me.

[lisapeet]

That request for comforting quotes obviously hit a nerve. There's some wonderful stuff there, a lot of it new to me.

[lynn c]

Geez, Pat, you're killing me too. Thanks (I guess) for finding this stuff ;)

[Lauren B]

That Faber Finds thing is too much. Of course, I'll want them all. It's the NYRB reprint series all over again.
Sigh.

Good work, Pat. Bitch.

[Pat_D]

Makes me smile and totally worth the effort as long as y'all are enjoying this.